Bush 'surprised' by Greenspan criticism

US president George Bush was surprised by the criticism levelled against him and his administration by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in his new book, the White House said on Monday.

Greenspan bashed Bush for not responsibly handling the nation’s spending and racking up big budget deficits, saying he and Congress’s former Republican leaders abandoned the party’s conservative principles favouring small government.

“My biggest frustration remained the president’s unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending,” Greenspan wrote in the book entitled 'The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World', being released today.

White House press secretary Dana Perino defended Bush’s fiscal policies, and said that veto threats from the president were enough to keep spending from spiralling too high.

Under Bush, government spending for the fight against terrorism increased, and Perino said the Bush administration doesn’t apologise for acting on behalf of “the safety and security of the American people”.

At the same time, government revenues declined because of a string of tax cuts, which Greenspan also criticises in his book.

“The president was a bit surprised by some of the criticism in the book,” said Perino. “Remember in late 2000, we were headed into a recession and tax cuts were the prescribed remedy. And that has borne out to be one of the best decisions we made in order to keep the economy growing like it is.”

Perino also disputed Greenspan’s line about the Iraq war, in which he said “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Perino said Greenspan has since “acknowledged that oil was not the president’s motive for our engagement in Iraq.”